Magic Cake
by Arynn Octavia
Summary: Takes place after "Grave Danger". It seems Nick still hasn't fully recovered from his ordeal, his coworkers on the night shift try to help. Slash.


**Fandom **CSI  
**Title** Magic Cake (1/2)  
**Author** Arynn Octavia  
**Category** h/c, f/t, romance, fluff  
**Spoilers** Grave Danger  
**Rating** Pt.1 is PG13  
**Pairing** Gil Grissom/Nick Stokes  
**Summary** Nick was not being himself. It was understandable, he had gone through hell. It was impossible to live through something like that and not be changed. But he had totally withdrawn into himself and never spoke to anyone anymore.  
**A/N** My second CSI fic, and third fic over all. I have no beta, so any mistakes are my fault, and my fault alone. 2,890 words. WIP  
**Disclaimer** I don't own anything except the plot, and this half eaten bag of Skittles. This is not an infringement; it's a tribute.

Magic Cake

Nick was not being himself. It was understandable, he had gone through hell. It was impossible to live through something like that and not be changed. But he had totally withdrawn into himself, and hardly spoke to anyone anymore.

Gil was fiercely proud of his team's joint effort to rescue Nick. Every one had played an important part, and it would have been an utter disaster if any of them had not been involved. And it had changed them all to the core, but none more so than Nick. After his rescue and subsequent release from the hospital a week later, the department had given Nick a few months of paid leave off, to deal with his life.

During that time, Nick had had little to no contact with anyone from the lab. Gil had heard it through the grapevine that he had gone back to Texas to visit all of his family. He was glad that Nick was beginning the healing process, but surprised himself with how much he missed the guy. He often found himself thinking about Nick in the oddest of ways. Beside the usual worrying about him and wondering what he was doing right now, Gil found himself missing the crinkle in the corner of Nick's eyes when he smiled. And when he saw a new commercial that he knew Nick would have found hilarious, he missed his laugh.

He had started to dream about Nick every night too. Sometimes they were ordinary dreams where they would just go about their usual work day. But most were nightmares where he would revisit that nursery. Nick's scream when Warrick had to leave him in the hole would play over and over in Gil's mind, stopping his heart the way it had done when he first heard it in real life. "Put your hand on my hand," he would say, trying to calm Nick down, but when the lid of the box was lifted, he couldn't help lift Nick up into his arms, remembering too late about the explosives. The world would go dark, and he would wake screaming out, "Nicky!"

Ecklie had acquiesced and put the team back together where they belonged, so that when Nick had come back to work in November, he had joined the night shift and life seemed to have resumed. But only on the surface was everything back to normal.

Gil's relief at having Nick back was short lived. They had Nick's body back, but they didn't really have Nick. It was more like the shell of the man they had once known. The spark that made him Nick wasn't there. Gil gave it some time, hoping it would slowly get better, but after a month and a half of this, it had spread through the lab like an epidemic, turning the whole of the night shift into zombies.

Ecklie had met with Gil and mentioned the thought of giving Nick more time off, but Gil had a feeling that that would only make it worse. As per Ecklie's request, Gil had taken Nick aside and told him to give the department psychologist a visit. And Nick had gone, but none of it helped. And two more weeks passed.

Gil had been thinking about Nick even more in those two weeks. Whenever he wasn't keeping his mind busy on a case, it would inevitably fall back on the subject of Nick. Something had to be done to shake Nick out of his stupor. Catherine seemed to be thinking along the same lines.

On Friday night she had brought in a monstrous chocolate cake that resembled a cake only in theory. It didn't really have any defined shape, and was dripping in chocolate icing that, for some reason, was too runny, and therefore was pooling around the edges of the plate the cake was on. It was clearly a home made cake, and Catherine was clearly not a good cook. She had also brought in jugs of Seven Up and Hawaiian Punch, a large punchbowl, and packages of plastic cups, bowls and forks. She had a look on her face that said quite clearly that she was plotting something.

But Gil felt a wave of gratitude toward Catherine at the genuine, but very short lived smile that graced Nick's face when he first set his brown eyes on the chocolate mound in the middle of the break room table. Nick had seemed to come alive, but the smile lasted only a split second, and the only evidence that it had ever existed was the fading warm feeling it had created in Gil's gut. Gil wondered if Catherine had made the cake that way on purpose, just to elicit some response from Nick.

The cake sat there all through the shift, and despite the look of it, it was filling the room with a delicious smell. It was somewhat funny to watch people go into the room with hopeful looks in their eyes, searching for the source of them smell, only to see the cake and flee the room as if it was about to become animate and kill them all, although Gil did observed Greg surreptitiously sneaking into the room and sticking his finger into the blob.

Greg pulled back his gooey finger and studied it closely for a few seconds, and Gil had the sneaking suspicion that Greg was about to go into the DNA lab to look at it under a microscope. But Greg just shrugged and pushed his finger into his mouth, pulling it out clean with a huge smile on his face. "Brave boy," he thought to himself, making a mental note that if Greg was still alive at the end of shift, he would try some cake too.

Finally, they had all finished what they had been working on. Shift was almost over, and the whole team was found solemnly surrounding the table as if they were standing around the grave of a mutual acquaintance that none of them had actually liked. Some people looked at the cake with trepidation, and politely refused when offered a piece. Most of the lab techs left fairly quickly, leaving Hodges, Sara, Catherine, Warrick, Greg, Gil, and Nick alone in the room with the cake.

Gil was a notorious chocoholic, as was Nick, so it wasn't a surprise when they, along with Greg, were the first brave souls to venture forward and scoop some into bowls. The whole cake seemed too soft, and over the course of the shift it had spread out around the edges so that it was slightly shorter and wider than it had been when Catherine had brought it in. They each hoped that this wasn't because the cake was under cooked.

Greg immediately dove into his piece, and ate it with gusto. Gil and Nick each tried a small bite at first, and when nothing horrible happened, ate the rest normally. Warrick shrugged saying, "What the hell?" and served himself up a piece. Hodges quickly followed suit.

Sara was waiting for Catherine to take a piece, because she had been watching the proceedings with a calculating smile on her lips that Sara didn't trust. When Catherine served herself up the largest piece yet, Sara relaxed and took an equally large piece for herself.

They all sat around the table in silence eating the cake with various degrees of pleasure playing across their faces. It was extremely good, and Greg found his earlier speculation correct. The cake seemed to be made of regular dark chocolate cake, mixed together with chocolate pudding. As if Catherine had cooked a regular cake, then squished it into a blender and blended it with the pudding for a few seconds. Parts of it were lumpier where there was more of the cake, and parts seemed to be as much as 30 pudding. He couldn't figure out what the icing was, but it was very delicious.

Catherine watched as her cake lightened the mood considerably, but was troubled when she saw that Nick was still brooding. He was looking down at his cake sadly as he slowly ate it. She glanced at Gil and saw that he was no better off. Instead he was watching Nick and looking equally as sad. When she was growing up her grandmother had always made this cake when she had needed cheering up. She called it her magic cake, and it had usually…no it had always done the trick. Except for this time.

She had made it exactly right, except that the icing was supposed to be simple chocolate syrup, but she didn't have any, and had to use what was available, which happened to be chocolate body paint. 'Magic cake strikes out for once,' she thought to herself.

Greg finished his piece quickly and decided on more. He didn't see the need to use his bowl, so he just stuck his fork out and took a bit off the cake itself, dipped it into the yummy frosting, and brought it to his mouth, dripping chocolate droplets on the table along the way. "Chocolate spatter analysis" he chuckled to himself as he dragged his finger over the table and licked the frosting off of it.

Watching this display, Hodges shifted in his seat for a second. When no one reprimanded Greg for his childish display, he shifted closer to the cake and took a large lump onto his fork, dipping it into the icing and shoving it into his mouth, his shoulder lightly brushing Greg's.

"We aren't cave men, you know," Sara said with a chuckle, and moved in closer to the cake on the other side of the table. Pretty soon no one was using their bowls except Gil and Nick.

Nick had stopped eating and was staring off into the distance with a melancholic look about him. Gil couldn't take any more of this, only something drastic could shock Nick out of this funk. Before he had given himself time to think, Gil scooped a lump of the cake out if his bowl with his fork and with a straight face lobbed it across the table at Nick's head. It hit him square on his right temple.

The rest of the team gaped at Gil with shocked looks on their faces. No one could believe that "Gruesome Grissom" had just thrown food across the break room.

"Hey!" Nick growled almost angrily, as if coming out of a trance. For a second Gil thought that he had made a mistake, but then Nick flung the cake that had been sitting on the end of his fork at Gil. It hit him on the cheek splattering some chocolate onto his lips. With the same impassive look that Gil had had the whole time, he flicked his tongue out to lick off a bit that had stuck to the edge of his mouth.

For a nanosecond the room become tense, everyone wondering what would happen next. Then a small smile started to form on Nick's lips, and a short release of breath later, he was laughing harder than any of them had ever seen him laugh. Greg took Nick's mouth hanging open as an invitation and shot a small bit of cake into it.

Nick coughed for a second, but managed to swallow the cake in his mouth. "That's it, you've asked for it," he said through his laughing, and reached toward the cake. He took a large chunk of it in his fist and hurled it at Greg's chest. It splattered across his shirt then slid down his front and landed in his lap with a splat. For the next two minutes, the only thing anyone walking by the break room would have seen was bits of brown stuff flying in every direction.

---------- 

  
Finally, everyone collapsed in their chairs winded, and looked around the break room in horror. They had, at long last, realised where they were. "Oh great, now we have to clean THIS up!" Catherine said with a smile. 

Gil looked around and sighed. "No, I started it. You guys go take showers and head home." He HAD started it, but the smile that was now on Nick's face more than made up for any trouble that Gil would get into.

"Grissom, this place is a mess, let us help," Warrick said, brushing crumbs off of his shirt, and onto the floor.

"No, with all of you traipsing around, you'll do more harm than good," Gil said firmly. He gave them a look that none of them dared go against.

They all made their way to the locker room, taking great care to not get any chocolate anywhere that wasn't the break room. They each took turns in the showers, and left when they were done. Finally the only ones left were Catherine and Nick. Nick had finished his shower and was getting dressed. He was sitting on the bench in front of his locker looking thoughtful. Catherine was about to go into the shower.

"Nicky, what's wrong?" she asked, getting a little worried again.

But Nick turned to her and smiled. "Oh, nothing. I was thinking."

"About what?" she inquired.

"Just life." He smiled again. A real smile. Catherine made a mental note to thank Grissom for busting Nick out of his shell.

"My turn in the shower," she said, smiling back and walking away.

---------- 

It had taken Gil a surprisingly short time to clean the cake off of everything. Luckily there had only been about a fourth of the cake left. The shift was officially ending in about five minutes, and he had enough time to take a shower before going about his day. He made his way to his office and grabbed an extra set of clothes and a bag for his chocolaty ones. Locking his office behind him, he went to the lockers. He could drive home and shower there, but he didn't want to get the interior of his Yukon sticky.

He was surprised when he entered the locker room and saw Nick still sitting there. He was clean, and his hair was slightly dripping. His black shirt was on, but not buttoned yet. Gil looked around and saw that no one else was in the room. He made his way over to Nick but remained standing, so as to not get chocolate on the bench. He didn't know what to say.

"I wanted to thank you for what you did tonight," Nick interrupted his thoughts before he had a chance to speak. "I've been thinking a lot about you recently, the whole time I was away, in fact," he added.

"Well, I…We've been thinking about you," Gil responded.

"The good thing about a traumatic experience is it gets you to examine your life, and think about what's important," Nick said. Gil didn't know how to respond, but before he had a chance Nick was standing and looking him in the eyes. "And I've been thinking about you, Grissom." The world slowed as Nick stood, and Gil could see each individual glimmer that Nick's wet hair gave off.

When Nick spoke Gil took a step toward him and said, "I've been thinking about you too, Nicky" Nick had obviously gotten dressed while still wet, because there were darker spots on the black cotton shirt from the water that had been on his skin, and there were still tiny droplets sticking to his chest. Gil swallowed, cursing the lump in his throat that made it so obvious.

"We shouldn't lie to ourselves, we never know when it will end. There's no use spending our lives miserable," Nick said, taking another step toward Gil. "We should be proud of who we are."

Gil tried to say 'yes' but couldn't make a sound. He just nodded instead.

"I want to tell you something. Grissom…Gil, I'm gay." Nick took another step forward. Gil nodded slowly. "You knew that." Gil nodded again. "And you are too." After a few seconds pause, Gil nodded. Nick smiled and took one last step toward Gil. "You have chocolate on your…" was all he said, before he leaned forward and gave Gil a chaste kiss on the cheek, ending it with a small flick of the tongue to pick of some of the icing that he himself had thrown there.

As Nick pulled away Gil dropped his bag, and his hands flew up and grabbed Nick's biceps. They locked eyes in a smouldering gaze and slowly leaned toward each other. "Wait!" Gil finally said when their lips were millimetres apart. "Not here."

Nick nodded and bent over to pick up Gil's bag. Gil watched him with wide eyes the whole time. Nick checked that Gil's keys were in the bag. Looking back at Gil he swiped his thumb over Gil's jaw, picking up more cake. Gil leaned into the touch and his eyes fluttered. Nick licked the cake off his thumb and smiled at Gil's almost inaudible moan. "Is your office locked?"

Gil breathily answered, "Yes."

Nick nodded again. "Good, let's go," he said as he grabbed Gil's hand and lead him out of the room, holding Gil's bag in his other.

"Magic cake, indeed!" Catherine said from the other doorway, where she had been watching since she had finished her shower. "Nana would be pleased."

End part one, the fluffy part. Part two, the smutty part, soon to follow.


End file.
